What's Hot: Great collections and lots of fun designing your own case, easy and painless, different case models to choose from.

What's Not: Would love to see more bands and artists.

Case-mate has made getting an iPhone 4 case fun! First they introduced the DIY cases where you can upload your own photos and put them on your case or select from a large library of stock graphics designed by professional artists to scenes of famous places. Now, Case-mate has introduced a new series of hands-on cases that?s called "I Make My Case". While the concept is quite similar to the DIY cases, the "I Make My Case" series offers more specific collaborations with popular music groups and fan favorite artists. You can get the new graphics printed on Case-mate?s three case series: Barely There, Tough Case and ID Credit Card Case.

Design

I thought it was fun putting my favorite cat photo on the back of my iPhone 4 case, the I Make My Case experience takes it to a whole new level. Case-mate did a great job at providing the most flexibility in design within a given artist. The collection of the designs isn?t as large as the DIY cases because this is a selected group that Case-mate wanted to collaborate with. It includes bands such as NIN, No Doubt; and artists such as Joshua Davis, Ray Frenden and Hannah Stouffer and more.

The really cool part about designing a ?I Make My Case? piece is the tools Case-mate provided on the ?I Make My Case? design page where you can play with everything within an artist?s collection and make a case that?s of your own design. Each artist/band offers three groups of design elements: background, elements and tools. Each collection has very different looking backgrounds yet all reflect the theme of that collection. Elements is where you pick individual pieces to populate the background you picked out and you can stretch the size of each element pieces to fit your design. Once you get the background and element pieces on the case, you can use the tools for special effects like mirror the images, change colors or kaleidoscope it.

Like the sample case we made here from the children?s series Yo Gabba Gabba!, we chose the green background from a series of other vibrant colored themes. And then we picked the green Brobee, Muno the red cyclops and DJ Lance Rock as well as the name of series from a large number of pieces in the Elements groups. There are many other characters, images and decorative graphics in the Elements to make the case design reflect what you wanted it to be. All you have to do is pick and throw on the canvas, and make the right size to fit the whole picture. Once you?ve finished a design, you can save it for use or compare later, or go straight to check out and pick which series case you want the design to be printed on.

Features

Since we made a Tough Case for the iPhone 4 in the DIY series, we selected the Barely There case for the I Make My Case series. The Barely There case for the iPhone 4 is basically the Tough case without the silicone layer, and it?s super slim. The Barely There case is a hard shell case that covers the back and the sides of the iPhone 4 as well as the four corners. It gives the phone a strong structural support. The case leaves most of the top and bottom of the iPhone 4 open, giving free access to ports and buttons. Since the case is slim, we have no trouble fitting the iPhone 4 in most audio systems and docks while in the case. The Barely There case also has a large cutout on the side that gives you access to the silence button (both AT&T and Verizon version) and volume buttons. The case has a custom cutout for the rear camera and flash on the iPhone 4. Like with most Case-mate cases, the Barely There case comes with a nice screen protector and an installation kit for you to put it on the iPhone 4?s screen.

Conclusion

We really enjoyed making the Case-mate ?I Make My Case? Barely There case for the iPhone 4. The design process is very easy and super fun, and the ordering is painless. Printing of the design has high quality and reflects the color you see on the design web site. It?s very nice to have a choice from three of Case-mate?s most popular series to print your design on, and it takes only a few business days to get your case. Let?s hope that more bands and artists will team up with Case-mate so that everyone can find their favorite graphics and characters to make their own case with.